DC: Arlington

The part of the week that Dave was most looking forward to was a trip to Arlington National Cemetery.  Here we splurged and saved ourselves more walking in the heat and took the tram tour.  This was wonderful!  It drove us around the entire cemetery in a breezy, open-air tram, with narration of some of the stories of those buried here.  The tram let us out at important places, like the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  On this day, there were actually 10 real funerals going on, so the tram did not make stops at a few places like the Iwo Jima (Marine Corps) Memorial.  

    

This day also had the best clouds. :)

We had all the feelings on this trip!  At a hallowed place, like the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where the ceremony is so precise and revered, you can't help but feel all the pride and patriotism, all the gratitude for those who made the ultimate sacrifice and for their families who live in the heart wrenching unknown.  

The Amphitheatre.

A view of the whole city from Robert E. Lee's house on the hill.

This day ended with a dinner we were pretty excited for!  After hearing rave reviews, I made us a reservation for Sfoglina-- a pasta place with a famous chef.  We had the 3 pasta family sampler with a side of Nonna Palmina’s Meatballs and we devoured it!  For all the foodies out there, this is Fettuccine Alfredo from Rome, Gnocchi with shiitake mushrooms, porcini crema and grana Padano from Le Marche, and Mafalde Telefono with smoked mozzarella, tomato, and basil from the Amalfi Coast (the most delicious thing I ate all week!). I haven't spent much time talking about our food, but we ate well!  We tried to find unique DC places, causal or fancy.  Some nights it was ramen and Brussel sprouts tempura, or a cheese-stuffed mushroom burger for beef-averse Ella and a birthday cake milkshake for sugar-lover Delia from Shake Shack (the East Coast's In & Out) and some nights it was pasta we had to google the pronunciation for! :) Ella is an adventurous eater and said great food was one of her best surprises on this trip.

DC: The White House

The night we booked our DC trip, I sent an email to our Congressman to start the process for tickets to places like the White House and the Capitol.  It always kind of felt like a long shot that we'd get to go, so we managed our expectations and said we'd be fine if for some reason it didn't work out.  We're SO glad it did because this White House tour was way cooler than we anticipated!  We saw legit, recognizable stuff and the propaganda for our current administration was limited to none. ;)

White House Tour day started with a stop at DC's famous Astro Doughnuts, where the crème brulee doughnut was delectable.  Check out the s'more one with a whole roasted marshmallow on it!

After passing FOUR separate levels of security, including one with dogs, one with an x-ray machine, and two with Secret Service guys running our social security numbers, we were allowed in!  The tour was self-guided, which was perfect.  We could go nice and slow.  We were the last group in our time slot, so it felt like we were the only ones there.  The first thing we saw was the garden and the famous Truman balcony.

This windowed hallway was adorned with picture collages of  presidents living their everyday lives in White House.  We all loved this one dedicated to Pets of the White House.

We peeked in the Library, the Vermeil Room, the China Room, the Green, Blue and Red Rooms and the State Dining Room.  Our favorite was the East Room, which housed this famous picture of Washington that Dolly Madison famously snatched from the Old White House as it burned down.  We recognized this room as the backdrop for lots of famous stuff-- like where the Hamilton cast sang "One Last Time" to President Obama.

It struck us how ornate and opulent everything in the White House was!  There were no ordinary end tables, for example, every one had legs carved out of gold eagles.  No regular lamps, just showy chandeliers.  Every piece of art on the walls was old and famous and meant something.  We left the White House and walked back to our hotel through McPherson Park-- a homeless camp.  In a matter of minutes we literally walked from the heights of grandiosity to a community of people living in tents.  Another one of those strange contradictions in this city.

Leaving the White House, a nice couple in front of us offered to take our family's picture.  This happened a lot of this trip!  We have some great pics of the 4 of us and we didn't ask for a single one!  Of course we returned the favor often.  In all my White House pictures, I'm noticing the Secret Service guys in the background intentionally covering their faces.  Interesting!

One last look from Lafayette Park.  Because it was a surprise how neat this tour actually was, we all ranked the White House as one of our DC Faves!  I feel like "I've been inside the White House" will play well for all future get-to-know-you games, like Two Truths and a Lie! :)

DC: Holocaust Museum

Ella's History teacher told her the Holocaust Museum would be her favorite.  While, after 3 trips through this museum now, I can't ever say I "enjoy" it or it's "my favorite", I can always appreciate it.  To be confronted with some of humanity's darkest moments and most evil choices and to then see the light and redemption at the end of it is important.   One different thing about this trip through the Holocaust Museum was how much more historical fiction I've read since I was last here in 2003!  Thanks to my book club and our love for WWII stories, at least a dozen times, I found information in the museum that I could say, "I read a book about this!"

Your journey through the floors of the Holocaust Museum starts with a card telling the story of a real person who endured the Holocaust.  As you go through the floors and divisions in history, you turn pages to continue their story.  Three of our people were Polish, one Austrian.  Three of our people went to concentration camps.  Three of our people survived, one died in the gas chamber at Auschwitz.

  

The first floor tells of the Nazi Assault through propaganda and the steps taken to strip the Jews of their businesses and livelihoods and rights.  Here we learned about events like The Night of Broken Glass, where Jewish temples were desecrated, their Torah scrolls ripped and destroyed.  Dave tried to see if he could read any of the Hebrew.  He could. :)

  

The second floor tells of the horrific and drastic Final Solution of the Nazis to completely eliminate the Jews through mass murder in concentration camps.  The train car and the shoe room are always hard to walk through.

This museum was a tough one for Delia.  She did not know about a lot of this.  She had no idea what a gas chamber was.  She stayed close to Dave, letting him gently narrate the horrors we were learning about.  Ella has studied this in more advanced History classes.  She was hungry to read it all.  I hate the subject matter, but I do love watching her learn.

There is nothing pleasant about this journey through the Holocaust.  The last floor is about liberation and acknowledgment of all those who helped and worked to bring justice.  A bright spot in this dark outing was seeing the several panels of (familiar) Dutch names-- people who risked their lives and safety to help and protect Jews after the Germans invaded the Netherlands.

"Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them." Deut. 4:9

This afternoon at the Holocaust Museum was, appropriately, dark and gloomy.  Thunderstorms raged outside.  Needing a breath/break, or just admiring the rain we get to see so seldom, we had to stop and watch the drops streaming down the glass ceiling.  

DC: National Zoo

Dave and I totaled it up.  Between the two of us, we've been to Washington DC 8 times!  Our goal on this trip was to introduce our kids to the classics, while still finding some new things we'd never seen.  The National Zoo checked that box!  The coolest thing about the National Zoo is that it's the only place left in our country to see pandas!  This zoo houses a 3 panda family and we sure enjoyed them!

Another favorite was this interactive, educational bird show!  Ella loves birds, so she especially enjoyed getting up close to her feathered friends.

(The red panda sign says, "The weather is too hot for me, so I'm hanging out in the a/c." and we felt that so hard.)

This was a great zoo, beautifully landscaped and having a nice variety of animals, from big ones like elephants and tigers...

To more obscure, like monkeys with mustaches!

We had a great couple of hours here, taking a break from the reading and learning and enjoying some beautiful creation!

DC: Smithsonians

After a morning of walking and sweating and learning, we were glad to spend the afternoon indoors exploring 2 of the world's best museums: the Smithsonian American History Museum and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.  A quick word about tickets.  Everything in Washington DC is free!  It amazed me all week that we could see these renowned places without paying anything!  But right now everything in DC requires a timed entry ticket.  This means months ago I did some major planning and lined up exactly what day and time we'd do each thing.  The NMAAHC was especially hard to get into, it's so popular.  

Our time at the American History Museum was admittedly short.  My favorite items here were off exhibit (the Muppets, Mr. Roger's sweater, Indiana Jones' hat and whip, Dorothy's ruby slippers, etc.), preparing for a big, new entertainment exhibit opening in October.  We just swung through the First Ladies exhibit, enjoying the free a/c and watching Delia come more to life over historical fashion than she had over any of the marble walls, bronze statues, and iconic speeches we saw all morning!  This sparkly purple inauguration gown was her favorite.

                                            

Our last stop on this day was 2 hours at the African American History and Culture Museum.  This was a new one to me and one I was most excited about.  It did not disappoint!  I was moved to tears here and found this so incredibly powerful.  The museum walls are made of this beautiful, see-through, metal cage material.  You start by going 3 floors underground in a glass elevator.  On the black walls of the elevator shaft are written big, bold dates, so you really feel like you're moving back in time. 

We immerged deep underground and in the 1400's where we learned about the origin of the slave trade.  This was intense and emotional as we saw heartbreaking things, like the slave ship maps and the shackles made for children. Sobering here were descriptions of each major European country's role, framed on a wall that listed slave ship names, how many it carried, and how many it lost at sea.  The Dutch made us proud during the Holocaust.  Not so much during the slave trade.

We were confronted with the paradox of a nation fighting for its freedom while relying on enslaved people to build that new nation.  Jefferson's Declaration of Independence words in this place, inscribed behind the mountain of bricks engraved with the names of his slaves, felt mocking.

We saw glimmers of hope as we climbed out of the dark basement of this museum and into Emancipation.  This is Harriet Tubman's hymnal!

But then, even as slavery ended, we moved into the era of segregation and Jim Crow laws and "separate but equal", and bombings and lynchings.  We saw "colored" drinking fountains, and divided train cars, and shards of stained glass from the 16th St. Baptist church, and ugly KKK robes.  We climbed up though 2 more floors of persecution and prejudice, ending with the Civil Rights movement, Black Power, and ultimately, an exhibit on President Obama's election that had me unable to speak it hit so hard.

Once you have made it through 3 difficult underground levels, you are back at the ground level, which was this gigantic and glorious fountain room for contemplation, inscribed with famous quotes from Civil Rights leaders.  This quote of scripture from Dr. King has always been one of my favorites. 

We kept climbing and spent the above-ground floors learning about Black History in entertainment, music, and sports.  This was awesome!  Fun to see items like Louis Armstrong's trumpet, and MC Hammer's pants, and Carl Lewis' Olympic medals, and Michael Jordan's Gatorade commercial, and Mike Singletary's jersey.  

At the very top level, as we ended our last staircase, I said something like, "That was a lot of steps!" and Dave replied, "I think that's the point."  We started underground in the dark, walking past the wooden shards of an actual slave ship, and we ended in the sunlight, viewing the whole mall, and telling our girls about the Super Bowl Shuffle.  It was quite the journey.  I have thought about this experience every day since we had it.  If you are planning a trip to DC, please put this museum on your must-see list!  Just be sure to grab those tickets months in advance!